The Anatomy of Awards

by Staff
From the January/February 2013 issue of
Poets & Writers Magazine

While funding for the arts remains an uphill battle for universities, literary nonprofits, independent presses, and literary magazines, those organizations are still giving a significant amount of money to writers annually through writing contests. This past year was no exception. In the six issues published in 2012, Poets & Writers Magazine’s Grants & Awards section, the editorial feature announcing both contest deadlines and recent winners, listed 844 winning poets, writers, and translators. Together, they received a total of $9,595,066—an increase of nearly $3 million compared with our last annual count, published ten years ago. The charts below take a closer look at the numbers behind Grants & Awards. 

Comments

writing contest $

 To put the $9,595,066 winning sum in context for writers, please tell us -- if you have such statistics -- the  total sum writers spent on entry fees. Presumably, this figure dwarfs the winnings. 

That's a great point. It's

That's a great point. It's easy enough to track down the entry fees for all these contests, but I'm not sure it will be feasible to get the numbers of all the writers who entered every contest. We'll see what we can do along these lines. Thanks for the feedback. --Kevin Larimer, Editor